Had a fun incident in last night's gaming session. Using Mutants & Masterminds, we've had an Amalgam Universe idea going on for super heroes off and on for a couple years now. While my friend Zeus contributes to an Avengers-themed storyline, my friend Paul adds to it with a X-men themed group. In Paul's take, we're running the group with several inspirations from the movies. Borrowing from the first couple of X-men movies, there is a small school of mutants at the institute but this is the first real team that's come out of it all. And drawing from 'First Class'... Erik Lensherr is still a friend of Charles Xavier, and one of the teachers. But it's very clear the two have different goals.
He's running the game very story oriented, because the pacing of comic book adventuring is far different from fantasy adventuring. There's a lot of comments about the mundane aspects of life, but even the mundane is different when you're an X-man. I'm currently running Colossus (one of my two favorite X-men) and Theresa Cassidy - often known as 'Siryn', but in our universe her father never was an X-man so she was the one who adopted the mantle of Banshee. Since he's so straight laced and she's this hot tempered troublemaker who's still adapting from her lifestyle with her Uncle Tom raising her, it allows a lot of variation in personality.
At the very beginning of the session, Banshee was very upset with Professor Lensherr for a Danger Room routine that he ran that she felt was inappropriately themed because of how personally upsetting it was to one of the other students. Professor Xavier sided with her... but she was still going to serve detention because of some colorful language she aimed at Prof. Lensherr. And we had a bit of fun with it, saying that she complained in detention to Dr. McCoy that all the extra work she was being supplied with was stupid because it was all ridiculous science-y stuff that she would never use. And in his good natured fashion, Dr. McCoy shifted the focus of her detention classwork to focus instead on sound waves and how they interact with the world. It led to some chuckles amongst the group.
Well, last night we were playing the climactic final fight scene in which the team was fighting a giant mechanical drone that was really sweeping the floor with us. Even when Jean Grey through Colossus at it and he 'power attacked' a punch at it, he dented it but didn't seem to seriously damage it. But I have an idea. Asking to confirm that that mechanized thing seems to be mostly made of the same metal material, I'm told that it is. So, I declare that Banshee is going to try a 'power stunt' off of her sonic scream. Using her extra sharp hearing, she's going to scream at the enemy seeking from low to high until she finds its resonant frequency, and hope to help rattle itself apart. This will work as a 'weaken toughness' effect. Cyclops, the team leader, catches on to what she's trying and joins in with his optic blasts to 'aid another'. We both roll well, and large portions of the drone are blasted and shaken off. It's weakened at that point that the rest of the team take it out before the turn is over.
But here's the funny part. As soon as we get the description of how our joined efforts pay off, in character I have Banshee say "Dr. McCoy is going to have kittens when he finds out I actually applied the lessons he gave me from detention." Paul, running the game, was so pleased at having me tie in that little story element from the beginning of the adventure several weeks before that I earned a 'hero point'.
![Happy :)](./images/smilies/1.gif)